


City Lights

by April_December



Series: The Stars in Our Voids [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Attraction, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Haircuts, Light Angst, Modern Assassins, Spies & Secret Agents, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, unspoken attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 02:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10754508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/April_December/pseuds/April_December
Summary: While on the run from Shield and the Red Room, Clint decides to offer his life into the hands of the deadly Natasha Romanoff - by letting her cut his hair.  Part of the Stars in our Voids series.





	City Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: This is part of a series of one set of possible headcanons of mine as to what happened when Clint made that different call after meeting Natasha. After deciding not to kill her or turn her into Shield, they go on the run together, evading his organisation and hers. Although this is the first piece written, it is, chronologically, not the first in the series. More will be added as fast as I can write it. In the mean time, please enjoy.

‘So do I need to be worried about giving you some scissors, or are we past that?’ Clint asked, his tone showing that he was only half joking.

‘Depends,’ Natasha replied, raising an eyebrow.  ‘What are we meant to be past?’

‘You know,’ Clint nudged as he moved towards the chair Natasha had set out for him by the hotel window.  ‘The whole, ‘You use anything and everything to try to kill me and or escape’ thing.  Are we past that?’  
‘I’m not going to try to kill you,’ Natasha promised as she shook her head.  There had been numerous attempts, it was true.  She’d lost count after a while.  He’d always had the upper hand - hence the need for so many attempts – but then that tended to happen when she’d had to escape whatever bonds he’d had her in before she could do anything.  She was good, but so was he.  She still told herself she was better, but those kill-and-escape attempts had slowly become somewhat half hearted after he’d saved her from her own people, out to get her for her failure to kill him.  He’d stopped tying her up after she’d stayed to save his life when she could have run.

 Altruistic saving and not running.  It was new territory for Natasha, but one she was enjoying trying to navigate.  She still refused to admit aloud that he’d managed to worm his way into the feelings she’d tried so hard to beat down all her life.  Hell, she wasn’t even admitting it to herself.

‘What about the try to escape thing?’ Clint prodded, running a hand through his slightly too long hair.

‘I’m not going to try to escape just because I’ve got a pair of scissors, Barton,’ Natasha replied.  ‘Now do you want a haircut or not?’

The real question there was whether he trusted her.  It was one thing to have her word that she wouldn’t try to kill him.  It was another entirely to trust the Black Widow.  After a moment’s pause, he handed her the scissors, and sat down in the chair, hoping he hadn’t just made a fatal error of judgement.

She took the scissors by the blades, then spun them in her hands like a throwing knife.  For a moment, Clint half expected the next sensation to be the blades being plunged into his shoulder.  But instead, he felt her fingers in his hair, deftly combing through the spikes as she worked out what she was going to do.  It was a pleasant surprise, her touch gentle as her hand brushed through the hairs next to his scalp.  He had to suppress a shiver that snuck down his spine at what could only be described as a pleasant closeness.  He usually hated having his hair cut, which was why he’d put it off before coming on the mission to take down the Black Widow, and why one month later, it really was too long.  But this felt entirely different to the careless bristling of a barber.  This felt like a lo-...no.  He was not going to go there.  Too dangerous, too stupid, even to think to himself.

‘How much do you want off?’ Natasha asked, her thoughtful voice mercifully distracting Clint from his thoughts. 

He peered at his reflection in the glass of the window, studying the brown spikes that had begun to flop.  ‘A centimetre? Maybe a centimetre and a half?’

She nodded, her brow furrowed in concentration as she worked out where she was going to start.  ‘Hold still.’

Clint just about froze.  The Black Widow, Red Death, Slavic Shadow, was standing behind him with a pair of very sharp scissors.  The first soft snip made his bow fingers twitch, but all he felt was the ticklish cascade of cut hair falling around the base of his neck.

She worked in silence, her concentration absolute, until the ringing in Clint’s ears became unbearable.

‘Where did a Black Widow learn something as mundane as cutting hair?’ he asked at length, partly out of curiosity, partly to break the silence.

Natasha was silent while she decided how much detail to give him.  She’d been deliberately withholding almost any details about herself from him, determined to give him nothing to claw into, to use against her or tear her down with.  So she decided she wasn’t going to tell him that in the Red Room, there never had been a stylist; they’d cut each other’s hair.  And if they’d made a mistake, the victim would more often than not make the other girl pay for it in the next sparring session.

‘It’s practical,’ she said at length.  ‘If you’re on the run, you’re not going to pay a visit to the nearest salon to alter your hair to disguise yourself.  You do it yourself.’

‘But how do you know how to cut men’s hair?’

‘Short hair,’ Natasha corrected.  ‘Men don’t have a monopoly on short hair.’

‘Okay, short hair.  Is it really that important for you to evade the simple question?’ he asked with a teasing challenge, turning slightly to look at her from the corners of his eyes.

‘I don’t know, is it really that important for you to have an answer to the simple question?’ she challenged in return, then turned his head back so he was looking straight ahead again.  ‘Stay still.’

‘I just think it sounds like there’s a story there,’ Clint said, and in the reflection from the window, she could see his annoying grin.

‘There’s no story,’ she said, then sighed as she straightened his head again.  ‘Stay still.’

‘So tell me.  In five words or less if you like.  How do you know how to style short hair?’

Natasha rolled his eyes.  Sometimes the man was like a pitbull; once he had a hold of something, he just wouldn’t let it go.  It was going to be far easier just to tell him.  ‘I had mine cut short for an undercover mission once.’

‘I knew there was a story,’ he said, and there was that smug grin again.  ‘I can’t picture you with short hair.  What did you look like? A rebel punk rocker?’

Natasha snorted.  ‘I hated it.  The best thing about the mission ending was getting to grow it out again.’

‘How long was it before you liked it again?’

Natasha paused again, wondering if he was asking mundane questions out of idle curiosity, or if he was trying to gain something out of it, some knowledge he could use against her.  But if cutting her hair was the worst Shield was planning to do to her, she’d live.  ‘About a year before I was comfortable with it.’

He let out a low whistle.  ‘That’s a long time not to be comfortable with yourself.’

At that, she gave a snort.  ‘I’ve had longer.’

It was one of the few times she’d given him any clues into how she actually felt about herself, and it kind of startled him.  The most assured spy in the world wasn’t comfortable with herself?  He decided not to press that particular sore spot, lest she become angry and withheld, like she had in the past when he’d tried to ask about her.  ‘Okay, it’s a long time not to like your hair.  You mess this up, and I only have to live with it for a couple of months at best.’

‘Do you have that little faith in my skills?’ she challenged.

Now it was Clint’s turn to pause as her fingers deftly brushed through his hair, and the scissors were used with quiet precision.  It was actually a nice feeling.  He wasn’t used to that, casual contact with people feeling nice.

‘No,’ he decided, then his reflection grinned at her again.  ‘But that’s not permission for you to go and mess it up.

‘I wouldn’t dare,’ Natasha deadpanned.

He huffed a little laugh, and let the silence fall back over them once more.  It was starting to get dark outside now, making their reflections in the glass window sharper and more defined.  He watched the traffic below, red and white lights trailing through the streets, people who had no idea about the hidden world of spies and assassins, operating just out of view. As Natasha cut his hair, shifting one way and then another around him as she worked, he found his attention drifting to her.  Her petite slender form, belying how deadly she was.  The long elegant fingers as they combed through his hair.  The fantastic shock of red hair that cascaded over her shoulders.

_Careful, Barton,_ he chided himself.  _She’s the enemy._

Or at least, that was how she’d started.  A chained up spitfire, shouting abuse and promising him a painful death for keeping her that way.  But that had changed.  Any moment she liked, she could attack him and make a break for the door, claim back her freedom.  Yet she wasn’t doing anything of the sort.  Maybe that was why he still hadn’t called Coulson in; if she wasn’t so much of an enemy as when they’d started, where would they end up?  Neutral partners?  Allies?  If he called Coulson in now, he was sure she’d revert to the bitter prisoner she had been, and then Shield would gain nothing but a new high-risk prisoner to take to the Fridge. 

But maybe, just maybe, if he gave it some more time, they’d move past that, to a point where she trusted him.  He already trusted her, he realised.  He’d handed over the scissors, after all.  Now he needed to wait until that trust was returned.

‘Done,’ she said, her voice raising him from his quiet thoughts. 

He looked up to see their reflections just as she calmly brushed the last of the stray hair from his shoulders.  His hair looked so much better for it, and he felt more like himself again as he ran his hand through it.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, and he was surprised she cared enough to ask.

‘Better.  I look so much more handsome,’ he said, flashing her another grin.

She gave a loud tut and rolled her eyes.

‘What?’ he asked with a grin.  ‘I don’t look like an idiot now.’

‘Well, you might not _look_ like an idiot,’ she teased.

‘Are you ever going to stop calling me an idiot?’ he asked with a slight smile.

‘Probably not,’ she said with a shake of her head.

‘Should have known it,’ he muttered.  Secretly though, he wasn’t that disappointed.  He stood, not realising that the spy was coming to stand in front of him, and suddenly they were right in each other’s personal space, without warning.  Her bright green eyes snapped to his, widening slightly with alarm at the intrusion.  Her hand tightened automatically around the scissors – easily deadly in her hands – and he froze.  Natasha halted too once she saw he was making no further move.  What was she thinking?  Had she thought that he was about to attack her, maybe truss her up again?  A small stab of guilt pinched in the pit of his stomach, but really, before now, he’d had very little choice.

Slowly, Natasha relaxed, her fingers loosening around the potential weapon.  She stood there, carefully reading every micro expression that flitted across his face.  Some were easy to read – alarm, tension, anticipation – but others were indefinable.  He seemed to plan to just stay still, not move again, and that she thought was a wise play.  But she took this moment of unexpected closeness to study him, to try to define those flickers in his eyes, to read those corners of his thoughts that she hadn’t quite been able to work out.  Despite her intense scrutiny, his expression relaxed as he realised that, barring further provocation, she wasn’t going to do anything.

Not for the first time, Natasha questioned just _why_ she wasn’t.  She told herself that it was a simple series of deductions; he’s saved her from her people, she needed to pay him back.  _Yes, but you’ve done that_ , a small voice echoed inside.  _You stayed to help him.  Debt paid_. 

But there was no use escaping now, she told herself.  If she did that and was successful, he’d call in Shield, and then she’d have the biggest spy agency hunting for her doubly hard.  But if she could win his trust, convince him to let her go...That had to be why she wasn’t trying to escape.  She’d already tried sleeping with him to gain that level of trust.  But despite the fact that he’d been delighted by her seduction techniques, he’d soon seen through them and determined their actual goal.  It had been a frustrating night for both of them.  Now she was stuck playing the long game, biding her time until she could win her freedom back.

None of this though explained why his eyes glinted beautifully in low light, or what exactly his smile did to her stomach.

_Careful, Romanoff.  He’s the enemy,_ she reminded herself.

Scant seconds after beginning her intense scrutiny, Natasha stepped away, disengaging.  Clint sighed out a small breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

‘Sorry.  Didn’t mean to push in on your space,’ he offered.

‘It’s fine,’ she replied, offering out the scissors.

He gave a brief smile and took them back, seeming suddenly unsure of himself.  ‘Anyway.  Thank you.  For the haircut.’

Was he...flustered?

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, a little slowly, surprised by this new revelation that she could have this effect on him.

‘And, you know, thanks for not stabbing me with the scissors,’ he said, gesturing to the sharp points in his other hand.

‘It seemed like it would be rude,’ Natasha said with a small smirk.

‘Yeah, it would kinda,’ he said, putting the scissors back in the medipack in his bag – the bag that carried both his and her weapons that she still wasn’t allowed near.  She watched him, still apparently at a loss.  What else had she missed while she was trying to read him?

‘Anyway,’ he said, zipping the pack up.  ‘What do you want for dinner?’

It was an odd question from a captor, but once he’d consented to feeding her – and she’d stopped swearing at him quite so vociferously – he had tried to find out what sort of food she actually wanted.

‘Anything that comes with something fresh,’ she answered.  ‘I would kill for some fruit.’

Coming from a Black Widow, Clint wasn’t sure if that was hyperbole or not.


End file.
